Computer data centers concentrate a massive amount of computing power in a small number of locationally-related buildings (e.g., on a single site)—generally very large warehouses filled with many rows of computer servers mounted in racks (with thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of computer motherboards or computer cores). Such computers can be networked together and to the Internet to receive, process, and respond to requests from other devices connected to the Internet or other networks. For example, a computer data center may house server systems that respond to search requests, that provide email and similar services that stream music to registered users, and the like. Computer data centers may also be deployed in other contexts. Financial institutions, for example, may employ one or more computer data centers to store financial account and transaction information or to carry out trades with electronic markets.
The massive computing needs of a computer data center can lead to massive electric power requirements. For example, modern large computer data centers can demand tens of megawatts of electricity when operating, or even more. The cost of obtaining such large amounts of electricity can be very high, and the equipment needed to distribute the electricity to computer systems in the computer data center can be expensive and complex.